AOL Interviews "Family's" Eric Stonestreet On Improv. and Camera Insp.

[JamesG]

Modern Family fans love themselves the Cam show. Just ask the guy who plays him. Anyone who has watched ABC's new hit comedy knows Cameron as the gregariously loud, somewhat excitable, all-around hilarious half to the more serious Mitchell (Jesse Tyler Ferguson).

And with his pitch-perfect delivery and exceedingly quotable quips, actor Eric Stonestreet has quickly established himself and his character as one of the freshman series' breakouts.


Kansas City native Stonestreet had memorable turns on shows such as The West Wing, Bones, CSI, Nip/Tuck, and Pushing Daisies before landing this plum multi-faceted role of the football-loving, newly adoptive father and budding auteur on ABC's dysfunctional family comedy.

We chatted with the 38-year-old (who sounds nothing like his TV alter ego) about his character's unlikely inspiration, his history with clowns, and how success tastes so much sweeter after you've been kicking around the business for a bit.



Are you very much like your character?

I always kind of say I'm sort of the straight version of Cameron. I have the ability to get passionate about things like Cameron does.

Back in the days when I had a lot of free time I would wake up and my friends and I would search out where the best French dip in Los Angeles was. ... I would say Cameron and I would most definitely be friends, for sure.

You'd want a guy like that around, just to bring the fun to every situation.




What about this show and this character in particular intrigued you?

It started off more from the perspective of the script. When I read the pilot episode of Modern Family it made me laugh. And you know, as actors we get to read a lot of things that don't make us laugh, so the chance to audition for something that was funny on the page was immediately exciting.

There's a lot of potential with [Cameron] as far as getting great opportunities to play moments and to have big funny scenes in the relationship with Mitchell.

And that's all any actor wants, is a chance to bring a great character to life and put your own perspective on it.




Is Cam the character you specifically auditioned for?

They wanted Jesse [Tyler Ferguson] to read for Cameron, but he wanted to audition for Mitchell. But I wanted Cameron from the get-go.




Did you model Cam on any particular person?

Well, when I was auditioning for the part, they didn't want a really big broad flamboyant character. Yet they had written a character that was going to, you know, deliver a baby in a Lion King moment. So that's sort of a pitfall where you say, well, how can you not create a character that's a little flamboyant?

When you start building a character like that, you have to work from the ground up, and know where the character has the potential of going. So what I did is sort of base the character on my mom. She's a passionate, fun, excitable, funny person.

And for me, just to ground the character in something familiar is important; I think it's a good lesson for actors to add something familiar to everything you do. It has to ring true for you.

Having the inspiration of my mom, quietly, underneath the layers is where Cameron comes from for me.




You have some of the best lines on the show. How much of it is written and how much is improvised?

It is 98 percent written. [The writers] know my improv background and they welcome it, but I never change the meaning of their words.

An example in a show that was on recently was where we locked the baby in the car. Once we locked the baby in the car, nothing was scripted in that moment. Jesse and I improvised that whole freak-out situation around the car -- you know, where he starts singing 'ABC,' and I'm like, "You locked all four doors," and, "Did that come from space?" -- all that stuff is improvised in those moments.

And we always get to improvise a little bit in the interviews -- we take passes at exactly what the writers say, and they'll always give us shots at doing some stuff. But for the most part it's pretty much scripted.




So you're going to play a clown in an upcoming episode?

Right before Thanksgiving I have an episode called "Fizbo" where Cameron brings back his clown character from a previous life before he met Mitchell. It's somebody's birthday party on the show, and Cameron's idea is that we give them a clown for their birthday.

And Mitchell's immediately opposed to that. But Cameron, being who Cameron is, moves forward with the objective, and Fizbo makes an appearance.




And this is something that's based on a real-life experience?

Yes, I was a clown as a kid. When I grew up I wanted to be a clown; I never said I wanted to be an actor. I wanted to join the circus and entertain people.

And the writers heard me talking about that when we were shooting the pilot and they wanted to see pictures and articles that were written about me in Kansas City as a kid, and they sort of used that as an inspiration. Fizbo was the name of the clown character that I had for years and years and years.

So it's a dream come true to be able to bring Fitzbo to life on the big screen in prime time.




What can you say accounts for the resounding success of this show?

Well, it's crazy. Critics like it, but that could be bad news, because then maybe viewers won't like it -- how often are they on the same page? So that was a little nerve-wracking at first.

But the truth of the matter is that I took the pilot home to Kansas City, and I showed it to my parents' friends. They're all in their 60s, and they laughed their heads off. And I came back and said, "I can report from the bread basket that we are funny."

They laughed, and so you start to think, okay, maybe we're onto something here, maybe the show's going to be accepted.




It seems like it's really resonated with audiences.

Nobody, none of us -- Ed [O'Neill, who plays Family patriarch Jay Pritchett] being the first guy that'll tell you -- thought that people would love it as much as they love it. And that's exactly what it is: People don't come to me and say, "Hey, good show," or they don't come up to me and say, "Hey, like your show."

Generally they come up to me and they want to just tell me how much they love the show. It's very sweet. It's humbling, it's exciting, it's overwhelming. You know, I've been going to the same sushi restaurant for six, seven, eight years, and I went the other day with a friend and it took us 10 minutes to get out the door. People feel -- and I'm glad that they do -- the desire or the need to tell me how much they love the show.

And that goes for every actor ... every one of us on the show gets the same sort of things. And the fact that I get to be a part of that, and get to be a character on a show that people love is just a dream come true.




Do you feel like you can appreciate this success a lot more because you've been in the business for a while?

One hundred percent. I've had good success in my career; I can't say that I've been an actor who's never gotten a job. But I've been close to a lot of big projects that I didn't get, and just the fact that people have hooked onto this and hooked onto the character is fantastic.

Thirteen years of rejection and disappointment will prepare you for embracing this in a very humble, hat in hand sort of way. I'm very appreciative.


"Modern Family" airs Wednesdays at 9pm on ABC.

http://insidetv.aol.com/2009/11/25/e...provising-cam/